


Hour of Lead

by Ironlawyer



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon Temporary Character Death, Depression, Extremis, Grief/Mourning, Iron Man: Director of SHIELD, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-08 16:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13461948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironlawyer/pseuds/Ironlawyer
Summary: Tony watches Steve on the courthouse steps and wants to feel nothing. He has Extremis to help with that.





	Hour of Lead

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [History Like Gravity [A Married Remix]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13430376) by [IndigoNight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoNight/pseuds/IndigoNight). 



> This fic is part of a Cap/IM 2018 Remix Relay chain (Fruit chain) and you can find the full [masterlist](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Cap_Ironman_Relay_Remix_2018/profile) on the Collection profile page. 
> 
> Thanks to my beta!

Tony doesn’t want to be human anymore. Humanity has him on his knees, crying and shaking and sure that he will never again know what it feels like to be happy and whole and a good man. Humanity was what lead him by the nose, saying _this is right,_ convincing him that his sacrifices would mean something. Humanity is a glitch in the system, a residue that should’ve been erased with the update, but instead it lingers, too thoroughly coded into his core to be properly deleted.

Steve had said Tony lost himself when he introduced Extremis. Steve thought it took a machine to act so heartless, but Steve was wrong about a lot of things. If Tony had been a vessel of logic, empty of emotion, perhaps he could’ve watched from the eye of the hurricane, unmoved, as the world around him faced the storm. It was Tony’s stupid fucking humanity that made all of this happen.

He wonders if he can identify the things that make him human. Find which brainwaves tell his body to start shaking when he thinks of Steve so he can flick them off. Induce mini-strokes so he never again has to feel what it’s like to wake with Steve’s name on his lips and scream into his pillow until his throat is hoarse.

He sits at the director’s desk and stares at a glass of Johnny Walker for the third time this week, because this is what humanity makes him. He wonders if he can even get drunk anymore.

Thousands of images of Steve flicker through his mind, cell phone footage, old war tapes, interviews and press conferences. Extremis tells him the hours of footages are in the thousands. He could spend his whole life watching Steve. Seeing him smiling and laughing, the little ways he used to touch his teammates (the little ways he used to touch Iron Man…), the big speeches and the battle cries. He could watch it all until he is numb.

Instead he watches the security footage. Fifteen different angles catching every step and every bullet and every struggled breath until they wheel him away. He memorises the twitch of Steve’s fingers, the way his chest moves with death rattle gasps. The way his blood pools on the steps and trickles down, painting the dull, flickering image red like some macabre drip painting. He sees the way the bullets tear though Steve’s flesh and Steve’s face contorts with pain and shock as he falls to the ground. He watches it until finally he feels nothing.

He holds the glass to his lips and breathes it, lets it burn the smell of blood and decay and _Steve_ from his nostrils. There is no Sue to knock the glass from his hand this time. The war is over. He has won.

“Director Stark?” Dugan doesn’t knock and he should feel something about that, might’ve once felt angry. He sees Steve lying on the courthouse steps and feels dull and hollow, like whatever emotion should be there has been worn away, leaving only a feint outline of what used to be.

“Is that…” Dugan is staring at the glass in his hand and Tony feels no inclination to hide it. “Are you drinking?”

He should say no. The alcohol is just a reminder of a time when he still believed he could ease his pain at the bottom of a bottle. He doesn’t really want to drink it. Extremis is enough to make him numb.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” He lays the glass on the desk and rests his hands in his lap. Extremis keeps them from shaking. Extremis plays the video of Steve dying again and Tony wonders if the tightness in his chest is some sort of emotion. He lets it play again and again as Dugan steps inside and closes the door.

“Can I speak freely, Director? Off the record.”

Nothing is ever off the record anymore. Extremis makes sure that every second of his life is immortalised in high definition and ready to play back at any second. Extremis shows him Steve’s face as he lays dying.

“Go ahead,” Tony says.

“Director…” Dugan pauses, shakes his head. “Tony,” he says with some emphasis, like they are friends, like he cares, like this is something beyond an obligation. “I’m concerned. I think you need help.”

“I don’t need help, Dugan.” He sees Steve’s lips move around last words he’ll never hear. All he needs is enough time to forget what it is to be human.

“You’re drinking.”

“Drinking was never the problem.” Drinking made the human in him sloppy and hazy. It made his hands shake and his reactions slow. Extremis keeps his heartbeat steady, his blood pressure normal, his breathing slow and deep and regular. The suit keeps his skin at a perfect 91 degrees. No sweat, no shaking, no signs of humanity. He will become the machine Steve thought he was.

“You’re an alcoholic and you’re acting Director of SHIELD, of course it’s a problem.”

“Tell me, Dugan, do I seem drunk to you?”

Dugan scowls. “Not yet.”

“Then get back to me when my actions are compromised and you’re prepared to state your concerns _on_ the record. Now, why are you here, Dugan?”

Dugan’s eyes linger on the whiskey. He eyes the bottle and the glass as if trying to calculate how much Tony’s had. Tony screws the cap back on the bottle and returns it to the drawer, where it weighs down paperwork and, somewhere buried deep in the pile, Steve’s death certificate. His whole life summed up in one drawer: business, booze and failure. He closes the drawer. Dugan’s still staring.

“Dugan,” he says, harsh and cold with a reminder that Tony is the superior here, even if Dugan hates him. “Why are you here?”

Dugan’s eyes finally turn to him and it makes Tony’s skin crawl. _Look away,_ he thinks, _don’t let him look at you._ He looks Dugan in the eye and sees Steve’s eyes, hazy with pain. His fingers twitch for the helmet.

“We have a situation,” Dugan says. “It’s… the body. We think you better come see this.”

Tony sees him, _it,_ lying stiff and cold on the mortician’s bench. He remembers how it felt to clench the helmet so tight his fingers turned numb. To have his face warmed with tears he had no right to shed. To feel like everything inside him was so vast and all-consuming that his body couldn’t contain it.

It’s a body, he thinks. Just a body.

He lets Extremis show him what it looked like, still and pale and bloody, with no hint of life. He gets to his feet and lets the image of Steve fuse to the back of his brain, lingering like a permanent afterimage.  Looping, haunting, and reminding him of the consequences of humanity.

“Lead the way,” Tony says. He puts the helmet on and he becomes a machine.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Patch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13598070) by [dawittiest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawittiest/pseuds/dawittiest)




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